源聚合

Over the years, Ethereum staking has become one of the most vital and successful aspects of the broader ETH ecosystem, with big companies steadily jumping into the field. The majority of these companies, especially Bitmine Immersion, are revolutionizing ETH staking, turning it into a massive financial sector and edge.

Bitmine Monetized Ethereum Staking At Scale

After the entry of institutional investors, Ethereum staking has been transformed into a significant business opportunity from a technical requirement. At the forefront of this evolution is Bitmine Immersion Technologies Inc. (BMNR), a leading digital asset platform dedicated to improving the ETH ecosystem.

With its remarkable involvement in ETH staking, Bitmine Immersion is proving just how large this opportunity can be. The digital asset platform has successfully transformed Ethereum staking into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise by growing its validator operations and staking infrastructure.

As outlined by Milk Road on the social media platform X, the company intends to increase its present investment of 1.83 million ETH, valued at approximately $6 billion at current rates, to 4.2 million ETH. Bitmine’s plan and robust participation in ETH staking are a clear sign of the growing institutional appetite for on-chain yield.

This expansion demonstrates how staking is now about creating profitable, long-lasting businesses around ETH’s proof-of-stake economy rather than just protecting the network. Over the past month, Bitmine has been responsible for almost half of all new ETH entering the staking queue. 

Milk Road stated that staking at this scale removes Ethereum from the liquid supply and locks it away in long-term infrastructure rather than short-term trading. When a single player expresses a willingness to commit billions of dollars’ worth of ETH to staking, it points to an increased confidence in ETH’s future economics.

According to the expert, structural pressure is created by a reduced liquid supply and ongoing network demand over time. Given the sustained growth in institutional staking, Milk Road is confident that ETH’s price will move higher in the foreseeable future.

ETH Powering Crypto Native Financial Rails

With crypto native financial rails expanding, Ethereum is increasingly being positioned as the core infrastructure for major financial firms. JP Morgan asset management firm has confirmed this narrative with its latest fund launched on the ETH network.

Milk Road has reported that JP Morgan has introduced a tokenized money market fund on ETH, which is now live and already holds over $100 million in US treasuries. The rails are native to cryptocurrency, and the product appears to be traditional finance.

In reality, there is no separation, and there is only a financial product operating on the trains that make the most sense. Interestingly, this is how institutions move into new systems. “Incrementally, and only after the rules are clear enough to deploy real capital. Once they are live, they don’t leave,” Milk Road stated.

An inactive Ethereum whale has just re-entered the trading scene, withdrawing over $15 million worth of ETH in just a single day. Considering Ethereum’s slow price growth over the past few months and the whale’s sudden appearance despite being dormant for months, there could be a possibility of insider trading.

Dormant Ethereum Whale Moves $15 Million ETH

A sudden $15.14 million Ethereum transaction has caught the crypto market’s attention, with the move either driven by insider knowledge or simple strategic positioning. According to data from blockchain analytics platform, Onchain Lens, the transfer shifted approximately 5,099 ETH from a dormant wallet address on Kraken into active circulation on Thursday, January 22. 

Based on on-chain records, the whale, identified by the address ‘0x761F2F,’ has remained inactive in the market for more than three months. The last few times the whale was actively moving in the market were when it executed a series of stablecoin and HYPE transactions. The anonymous whale had initiated multiple million-dollar trades in UETH, USDT, and USDC. Meanwhile, the HYPE transactions were primarily token burns. 

After withdrawing 5,099 ETH from Kraken, Arkham Intelligence reported that the whale had transferred the ETH to Lido Finance, converting it into 5,100 STETH. While there is currently no evidence of insider trading, the timing of the transaction raises questions, especially given Ethereum’s muted price action over the past few months and the mounting selling pressure from large scale holders. 

Typically, insider trading in crypto occurs when individuals with non-public information make large transactions ahead of major market events that could influence market price. Currently, there has been no spike in Ethereum’s price, nor any major news that could suddenly affect its movements. In fact, ETH continues to trade lower, down by roughly 1.7% over the past 24 hours. Its daily trading volume is also down by 34.89%, signaling reduced confidence among traders and investors. 

Whales Go Long On Ethereum

While dormant large-scale players are suddenly re-entering the market, some active whales remain bullish on Ethereum’s long-term prospects despite its ongoing downtrend. According to well-known market analyst Max Crypto, an anonymous whale has just opened a $202 million long position in ETH with 15x leverage. 

The scale of the trade is extraordinary considering Ethereum’s recent volatility. It shows strong confidence in the cryptocurrency’s future price action and its potential to overcome its ongoing downtrend. Notably, the position has a liquidation price of $2,495, meaning that if ETH falls to that level, the trade could be forcibly closed by the crypto exchange, resulting in substantial losses for the whale. 

Market participants are closely watching the whales’ positioning, with some calling it a brave but chaotic bet. Others have even speculated that the position may have been taken based on insider information, fueling discussions about potential market moves and a possible bullish turnaround for ETH.

Crypto pundit X Finance Bull has explained how Donald Trump’s push to sign the crypto bill into law will boost demand for XRP. This follows White House Crypto Czar David Sack’s prediction about how banks will come into crypto once the CLARITY Act passes.

How Donald Trump’s Crypto Push Will Boost XRP’s Demand

In an X post, X Finance Bull shared a video in which Donald Trump’s crypto adviser, David Sacks, stated that banks will begin to adopt crypto once the crypto bill passes. The pundit noted that this means banks are already positioned, while Ripple has the stack and XRP has the liquidity, and the rails are in place. As such, he believes that the token will be the go-to crypto once these banks enter the crypto industry. 

X Finance Bull further mentioned that institutions that have been waiting over the past few years will return and announce their buys and use of XRP once Donald Trump signs the CLARITY Act into law. The pundit added that this moment resets who is early and that he never needed hype to hold the altcoin. “Research and study were always enough,” he said. 

X Finance Bull also questioned why market participants were panic-selling if banks are going all in once Donald Trump signs the crypto bill into law. The pundit’s statements come just as Ripple partnered with DXC to integrate the token and RLUSD into DXC’s Hogan core banking platform. 

The banking platform powers more than 300 million deposit accounts and over $5 trillion in deposits globally. As such, this is a major step in XRP’s adoption, as the partnership will integrate Ripple’s payment technology into large-scale banking environments.

Trump’s Tariff Move Will Also Boost The Altcoin

In another X post, X Finance Bull claimed that Donald Trump’s move with tariffs will also boost XRP’s demand.  He shared a video of how the U.S. president said that $18 trillion is flowing into the U.S. economy thanks to these tariffs. The pundit asserted that such money flows put pressure on banks, payroll systems, FX rails, and settlement speed. 

X Finance Bull further noted that this creates nonstop cross-border payments and liquidity needs, and this is where Ripple and XRP come in. He explained that while old rails leak money, Ripple and the altcoin were built to stop that. The pundit also alluded to Ripple executives meeting with Donald Trump and to the token being mentioned as part of the digital asset stockpile. He added that the CLARITY Act is next and that when rules lock in, the U.S. capital will need U.S. rails. 

At the time of writing, the XRP price is trading at around $1.92, down almost 2% in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said he will fly to Japan this week for a multi-city community tour focused on Midnight, the privacy-focused network being developed in Cardano’s orbit, while hinting that new “commercially critical integrations” and major launch partners are nearing the finish line.

In a Jan. 22 video recorded from Colorado, Hoskinson framed the trip as both a reconnection with what he called Cardano’s “most critical component” and a staging ground for the next execution phase he wants the ecosystem to pursue: making leading applications meaningfully more competitive by combining Cardano and Midnight capabilities.

Midnight, Privacy, And A Cardano DeFi Push

Hoskinson said the tour will span Sapporo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Naha, and Tokyo, covering “the entire Japanese archipelago” over roughly two weeks. He described the agenda as part Midnight introduction, part Cardano status update, and part technical pitch for what builders can do when the two stacks interoperate.

“As many of you know, Japan is why Cardano exists. There would be no Cardano if there was no Charles and there would be no Cardano if there was no Japan,” Hoskinson said. “I went to Japan in 2015 and with our partners from Emurgo amongst others we were able to go about all of Japan and convinced them that Cardano needs to exist. So they put up the money we built it and the Japanese community still is the largest and strongest Cardano community in the entire world with more than half the supply there.”

That legacy, in Hoskinson’s telling, makes Japan a natural first stop for positioning Midnight not as a side project but as a strategic lever for Cardano adoption.

Hoskinson said that “about [the] middle part of this year” he intends to “aggressively push for the top 15 Cardano dapps to go through a overhaul and get some additional resources.” His stated goal is not incremental polish, but step-function improvements in usage and distribution.

“In my view the best place to take it is to focus on the DeFi ecosystem and the Cardano dapp ecosystem and ask the question how do we make those Cardano dapps more competitive? How do we 10x their TVL and their transactions?” he said. “Get them listed on major exchanges and get them where they need to go.”

The connective tissue, he argued, is Midnight’s privacy mandate, paired with new infrastructure components he referenced, including “new bridges,” “new stablecoins,” and “new oracles.” The pitch is that dapps cannot win on throughput and fees alone; they need new product surfaces that attract users and transactions from other ecosystems.

“My view is Midnight is going to be an indispensable component in that because it’s not good enough just to make them better, faster, and cheaper,” Hoskinson said. “The dapps have to offer new things and being able to combine Cardano technology and Midnight technology together. What that means is that we can actually offer privacy to the masses to Solana, to Ethereum, to Bitcoin and other places.”

Hoskinson also linked the push to Cardano’s broader engineering roadmap, citing Hydra progress while using a roads-and-traffic analogy to argue that application demand, not base-layer capability, needs to be the next constraint to break.

Japan Tour https://t.co/MTq8Trp0UP

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) January 22, 2026

After Tokyo, Hoskinson said he will head to Hong Kong for Consensus, where he plans to keynote and “have some cool announcements for Midnight along with some big big partners” tied to the network’s mainnet launch. He stressed he would not disclose counterparties until agreements are finalized, saying he expects people to be “very happy” with upcoming “commercially critical integrations.”

At press time, ADA traded at $0.3595.

Генеральная прокуратура России признала украинскую криптовалютную биржу WhiteBit нежелательной организацией. Надзорное ведомство считает, что через биржу незаконно выводили деньги из России, в том числе на финансирование ВСУ.

Reports say Capital One will buy stablecoin fintech Brex for $5.15 billion in a deal that mixes cash and stock. According to the bank’s release, roughly half of the price will be paid in cash and the other half in Capital One stock.

Regulators must still sign off. The two companies expect the transaction to finish by mid-2026, though that timing could shift if approvals take longer.

Brex Brings Cards, Software — And Stablecoin Plans

Brex began as a corporate card and expense tool for startups and has added services for larger firms.

Reports note the company moved quickly into payment tech last year when it announced plans to offer native stablecoin payments, letting customers send and accept dollar-pegged tokens with automatic conversion back into USD balances.

That bit of tech is a major part of why the deal matters to a bank that wants faster settlement options.

A Mix Of Old And New

This is not just about software. It is also a play for customers. Brex runs business accounts, serves big names in tech, and has built a set of tools that many businesses use daily.

Some of those clients moved business deposits to Brex after the 2023 banking turmoil, and those relationships are part of the package Capital One is buying.

The price tag looks smaller than Brex’s peak private valuation years ago, which shows how venture valuations have reset across the sector.

Why This Matters For Payments

Banks have been testing token-based rails and faster settlement for a while. By folding Brex into its operations, Capital One gains a ready platform that already experiments with stablecoin rails.

Real-time settlement for businesses can lower friction and could cut the waiting time for funds to clear. At the same time, regulators in the US and abroad are paying closer attention to token projects, so the new setup will run under tighter scrutiny.

Source: Coingecko The Growing Stablecoin Market

Stablecoins have drawn growing attention across traditional finance after Congress approved major rules for the tokens last year.

Based on data from Coingecko, the total value of stablecoins has climbed over 18% to an all-time high of $315 billion since the GENIUS Act was passed in July 2025. USDT takes the lion share of the overall stablecoin market.

Leadership And Market Reaction

Reports note that Pedro Franceschi, Brex’s CEO, will continue to lead the unit after the sale, now inside Capital One.

Investors reacted calmly overall; Capital One’s shares dipped early but were supported by robust quarterly results announced at the same time. That earnings strength helped soften any sharp market moves.

Featured image from YouHodler, chart from TradingView

Автор книги о личных финансах «Богатый папа, бедный папа» Роберт Кийосаки (Robert Kiyosaki) заявил, что его не волнует курс биткоина, золота и серебра. По мнению писателя и инвестора, эти три актива являются безопасным выбором в ситуации снижения покупательной способности доллара США.

Qubic says it is now building a Dogecoin mining integration, a step that moves the project’s post-Monero “attention” narrative into an implementation phase and reopens a familiar set of security questions around majority-hashrate risk.

In an X post shared Thursday, Qubic wrote: “The community didn’t hesitate. The vote was decisive: DOGE won with 301 votes. This isn’t a plug-and-play upgrade. Integrating ASIC hardware into uPoW requires real engineering, deep protocol work, and time to do it right. But the upside is significant. DOGE represents one of the largest and most established mining economies in crypto. Bringing it into Qubic’s useful Proof-of-Work model extends uPoW beyond theory, into scale. […] Development is underway. This is just the beginning of what is to come.”

Dogecoin mining integration is actively in development.

The community didn’t hesitate. The vote was decisive: #DOGE won with 301 votes.

This isn’t a plug-and-play upgrade.

Integrating ASIC hardware into uPoW requires real engineering, deep protocol work, and time to do it… pic.twitter.com/7aBgxfLdDR

— Qubic (@_Qubic_) January 22, 2026

Could Dogecoin Suffer A 51% Attack?

The announcement lands with baggage. In August 2025, Qubic ran what it publicly described as a Monero “takeover demonstration,” claiming it had achieved “over 51% hashrate dominance” during parts of the experiment and reporting a brief chain disruption that included a six-block reorganization and orphaned blocks. That episode became a lightning rod for the broader PoW security debate: how quickly external incentives can concentrate hashpower, and how markets react when “51%” enters the conversation.

Subsequent research challenged the strongest interpretation of those claims. A December 2025 paper reconstructing Qubic-attributed activity on Monero describes the operation as an advertised “selfish mining campaign,” finding Qubic’s hashrate share rising into the 23–34% range in detected intervals, while “sustained 51% control is never observed.”

Dogecoin’s mining economy is structurally unlike Monero’s CPU-oriented RandomX landscape. Dogecoin uses Scrypt and has, since 2014, supported merged mining alongside Litecoin, an architecture that has historically helped bolster its security budget by tapping into a broader Scrypt ASIC miner base.

That hardware reality is central to Qubic’s own messaging. The project said “integrating ASIC hardware into uPoW requires real engineering, deep protocol work, and time to do it right,” explicitly acknowledging that this is not a simple pool launch.

It is also where most of the immediate 51% attack fears run into friction. In an August 2025 research note, published when Qubic first began floating Dogecoin as the “next” network after Monero, 21Shares argued that a brute-force Dogecoin majority would be economically prohibitive, estimating that Qubic would need to match and then exceed roughly 2.78 PH/s, implying about $2.85 billion in hardware plus roughly $2.5 million per day in electricity (before logistics).

The more plausible risk vector, if any, is not Qubic buying its way to majority hashrate, but whether it can engineer incentives and integrations that convince existing Scrypt ASIC operators to route meaningful hashpower through a Qubic-mediated setup, an approach 21Shares characterized as “vampire mining.”

At press time, DOGE traded at $0.12521.

Прокуратура города Кванджу в Южной Корее начала расследовать дело о краже конфискованных местными властями биткоинов на 70 млрд вон (примерно $47,7 млн).

В Нижнем Тагиле российские правоохранители ликвидировали крупную нелегальную майнинговую ферму. Ущерб от ее деятельности оценивается в почти 1 млрд рублей, сообщила энергетическая компания «Россети Урал».

Интерес крупных компаний к криптовалютам прошел «точку невозврата», эти игроки крипторынка перешли от экспериментов к повсеместному использованию цифровых активов в своей инфраструктуре, заявили специалисты аудиторской фирмы PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

A little token that few people had heard of a year ago has become a big mover of money. Reports say the A7A5 stablecoin, launched as a rouble-linked coin, has processed the equivalent of $100 billion in transfers since it began moving at scale.

Elliptic Finds Rapid Growth And Large Volumes

According to analysis by Elliptic, A7A5 grew quickly after its launch and was used heavily for settlement between firms that could not rely on regular banks. The firm traced huge daily flows, with transaction totals rising into the billions and aggregate transfers passing major milestones.

Origins And Backing

A7A5 was set up in a way that tied it to rouble deposits and to a handful of private entities connected to Russia’s financial network.

Reports say the project was linked to a payments group and to banking partners that have been under western scrutiny. Some of the people and firms behind the token were later sanctioned by authorities in the US and the UK.

How The Money Moved

Transactions were concentrated on a small number of exchanges and on on-chain routes that made cross-border transfers possible without the usual banking rails.

In practice, the coin served as a bridge into other stablecoins and crypto markets. That routing let trade keep moving even when formal channels were closed to certain actors.

A7A5 Stablecoin Role In Sanctions Evasion Claims

Reports note that regulators and analysts view those flows as a tool that could help avoid sanctions. Regulators in several countries have taken action against linked platforms and individuals after patterns of transfers were uncovered.

Some of the design choices around the token made monitoring harder for a time, and in a few cases tokens were reissued in new wallets to muddy traces.

Market Reaction And The Wider Impact

Markets noticed. The token’s market cap surged, and exchanges that handled it saw sharply higher volumes.

Ordinary traders were not the main users; activity was often timed with business hours and weekdays, which suggested corporate or institutional flows rather than retail swaps. This type of pattern changed how people outside the region looked at crypto as a payments tool.

Authorities responded by blacklisting some addresses and platforms and by stepping up enforcement against those named in the network.

The moves show that a token can move a lot of value, but it can also draw regulatory heat and prompt countermeasures that affect every participant in the chain.

Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView

Финансовая разведка Индии (FIU) потребовала от криптовалютных бирж и платформ прекратить операции с приватными токенами типа Monero (XMR) и Zcash (ZEC). Легальные площадки обязаны провести делистинг этих активов.

Управление финансовых услуг Индонезии (OJK) сообщило, что к началу этого года количество инвестирующих в криптовалюты жителей страны превысило 20 млн. Львиную долю составляет молодежь, уточнили чиновники.

The CEO of stablecoin issuer Circle has weighed in on the importance of stablecoin rewards and why he believes the banking industry’s concerns about interest payments on these assets are “absurd.”

Circle CEO Rejects Banks’ Stablecoin Fears

Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Circle’s CEO, Jeremy Allaire, discussed banks’ growing concerns that paying interest on stablecoins poses a threat to the industry, calling the deposit flight narrative “totally absurd.”

The banking sector has expressed concerns about stablecoin rewards, arguing that interest payments will distort market dynamics and affect credit creation. In the US, banks have heavily criticized the GENIUS Act, claiming that it has loopholes that could pose risks to the financial system.

The executive rejected the sector’s general arguments, citing historical and practical reasons. He asserted that this exact argument has been historically used when new financial products, such as government money market funds, have emerged.

Notably, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan recently compared the digital assets to money market mutual funds, which require reserves to be held in short-term instruments, such as US Treasuries, reducing lending capacity in the system.

The executive told investors that the banking sector, small- and medium-sized businesses in particular, could face significant challenges if the US Congress does not prohibit interest-bearing stablecoins, as up to $6 trillion in deposits, or 30% to 35% of all US commercial bank deposits, could flow out of the banking system and into the stablecoin sector.

However, Allaire pointed out that, despite institutions claiming that financial products would “draw all the deposit base,” their growth has not “stopped the ability for lending to happen.”

The importance Of Rewards

Circle’s CEO also argued that stablecoins should not be singled out when rewards for other financial products exist and contribute to the system. “Those rewards (…) exist in every balance that you have with a credit card that you use. They exist around so many other financial products and services that we have,” he detailed.

“These rewards are actually very important,” Allaire continued. “They help with stickiness, they help with customer traction. They are not themselves like these huge monetary policy dampers.”

Most importantly, he pointed out that lending is moving away from the risk-taking of banks, with “a huge amount of lending is moving towards private credit.”

He cited a Wednesday WEF panel, in which a capital markets participant highlighted how the vast majority of GDP growth in the United States was “formed by capital market formation around junk bonds.”

“So private credit issuing junk bonds, capitalizing the build out of the American technology advancements, not bank credit,” the executive added.

Previously, Coinbase Institute shared a similar argument, affirming that “credit is evolving, not shrinking. Lending is shifting to private credit, fintech, and DeFi channels that don’t depend on deposits. Liquidity moves—it doesn’t vanish.”

Allaire concluded that “we want stablecoin money to be cash instrument money, prudentially supervised, very, very safe money. And then I think what we want to do is we want to build models for lending that build on top of stablecoins.”

С конца прошлого года резко возросли продажи биткоинов с адресов, хранивших монеты последние несколько лет. Эти люди так и не дождались нового исторического максимума цены, предположили специалисты ончейн-платформы CryptoQuant.

Ведущий шоу Shark Tank и председатель O'Leary Ventures Кевин О'Лири (Kevin O’Leary) рассказал о желании сдать в аренду 26 000 акров своих земельных владений дата-центрам и компаниям, зарабатывающим на майнинге и искусственном интеллекте.

Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is preparing to launch new rules related to crypto, including exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Thailand To Regulate Crypto ETFs And Futures This Year

As reported by Bangkok Post, the Thailand SEC is preparing regulatory changes related to crypto to support the growth of investment in the sector. Jomkwan Kongsakul, deputy secretary-general of the SEC, said the regulator is planning to issue guidelines supporting the launch of digital asset ETFs, while also working to enable crypto futures trading on the Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX).

ETFs are investment vehicles that allow investors to gain exposure to an underlying asset without having to directly own it. In the context of digital assets, ETFs enable traders to invest into coins like Bitcoin without interacting with any on-chain element like wallets or exchanges.

In the United States, spot ETFs gained approval by the nation’s SEC in January 2024 for Bitcoin and July 2024 for Ethereum. Since then, these funds have attracted notable attention, capturing demand from traditional investors who were reluctant to deal with blockchain infrastructure.

Kongsakul noted:

A key advantage of crypto ETFs is ease of access; they eliminate concerns over hacking and wallet security, which has been a major barrier for many investors.

Within Asia, Hong Kong approved spot ETFs for both Bitcoin and Ethereum in April 2024, while South Korea is planning to roll out similar investment vehicles this year.

According to Kongsakul, Thailand’s SEC board has already approved crypto ETFs in principle, with detailed investment and operational rules currently being finalized. Although an exact timeline is unknown, the SEC is expected to introduce the regulations “early this year.”

Alongside ETFs, the SEC is also moving to formally recognize crypto within Thailand’s derivatives framework, allowing digital asset futures products to trade on the TFEX. Kongsakul said crypto futures would provide traders with hedging tools and more sophisticated risk management options.

In related news, the US spot Bitcoin ETFs have faced weak demand recently, with the netflow for the current week sitting at a notable negative value, according to data from SoSoValue.

As displayed in the above graph, the US Bitcoin spot ETFs have witnessed net outflows of $1.19 billion this week so far. These negative netflows have come as the asset’s price has gone through a bearish shift, retracing the recovery it had made earlier this year.

Last week, the funds actually saw net inflows of $1.42 billion, breaking the trend of weak inflows or outright outflows that had persisted since mid-October. But this week’s netflow suggests the bullish market mood couldn’t last.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $89,100, down more than 8% over the last week.

Сенатор из американского Канзаса Крейг Боузер (Craig Bowser), состоящий в Республиканской партии, представил законопроект о создании управляемого казначейством штата резервного фонда биткоинов и других цифровых активов.

The crypto industry is preparing for a potential security challenge with the anticipated arrival of quantum computing. In response to this potential threat, Coinbase (COIN) has announced the formation of an advisory board composed of external experts. 

Coinbase Chief Security Officer’s Warning 

According to a report from Fortune, the newly established board includes academics from Stanford, Harvard, and the University of California, specializing in fields like computer science, cryptography, and fintech. 

Officially titled the Coinbase Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain, the group also features experts from the Ethereum Foundation, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform EigenLayer, and Coinbase itself.

Jeff Lunglhofer, Coinbase’s Chief Information Security Officer, elaborated on the potential impact of quantum computing on current encryption methods. 

He explained that the encryption protecting wallets and private keys of Bitcoin (BTC) holders relies on complex mathematical problems that would take conventional computers thousands of years to solve. 

However, with the computational power that quantum computers promise—potentially a million times greater—these problems could be solved much more swiftly, Lunglhofer asserted.

Although the security implications of quantum computing are genuine, Lunglhofer reassured that they are not expected to become an immediate concern for at least a decade. The purpose of the new advisory board is to examine the upcoming challenges posed by quantum computing in a measured manner. 

This involves fostering initiatives within the blockchain industry that are reportedly already underway to enhance the resilience of Bitcoin and other networks against quantum attacks.

Blockchain Networks Expected To Implement Larger Keys

At present, Bitcoin secures its wallets through private keys, which consist of long strings of random characters. These keys are accessible to their owners but can only be estimated through extensive trial-and-error computations. 

The advent of quantum computing, however, would make it feasible to deduce private keys using trial-and-error methods in a fraction of the time. 

In response to this looming threat, Fortune disclosed that blockchain experts speculate that networks will implement larger keys and add “noise” to obscure their locations, making them more difficult to detect. Implementing these defensive upgrades across blockchain networks is said to take several years. 

In the meantime, the newly formed Coinbase Advisory Board is gearing up to publish research papers and issue position statements aimed at helping the cryptocurrency industry brace for the impacts of quantum computing. 

Their first paper, which will address quantum’s influence on the consensus and transaction layers of blockchain, is expected to be released within the next couple of months.

At the time of writing, Coinbase’s stock, which trades under the ticker symbol COIN on the Nasdaq, is trading at $225.10. This represents a slight drop of 1.2% over the last 24 hours. 

Featured image from OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com